Chapter 8 Discussion Questions

1.      How do the principles of team composition to the setting up of a product design team whose goal is to integrate specific knowledge from different parts of the organization?

2.      Psychologists usually argue that the optimal size of a workgroup is about five or six members; not either smaller or larger. What are the factors that explain? Does the finding accord with your experience?

3.      Why do schoolchildren usually assign teams by alternating draws rather than some method that would increase efficiency? (Hint: it is not because they have no way of bidding with each other. It is because their objective is not team efficiency, but something different.)

4.      How is information technology changing your job? Is it making the job more enriched, with greater depth and breadth of skills required? Or is it the opposite?

5.      How has information technology changed the job of a secretary? Can you think of cases where part or all of a secretary’s job has been replaced by computers? Explain.

6.      What do you think the ultimate limits of expert systems will be (if any)? Why?

7.      What are examples

8.       of organizations that have extreme pressures for use of specific dispersed knowledge, or coordination, or low error rates? What methods have they used to solve these organizational problems?

9.      Based on your answer to the last question above, what lessons can be learned for the design of more ordinary firms?